Bonnie Sherk has an idea for Roosevelt Island.  It’s called A Living Library, and she’s been meeting with the heads of Island organizations to bring them – and their ideas – into its creation here.

It’s a planning project at this stage, funded with $50,000 from the Ford Foundation, but eventually the idea is to transform spaces on the Island into A Living Library.  Sherk’s papers, passed out to RIRA Common Council representatives Wednesday night, describe this concept as one which “creates site and culturally-sensitive community learning environments and transforms public places to incorporate the resources of the area: human, ecological, economic, historic, technological, and aesthetic.“  Each site (and there’s one in San Francisco already) is “to be linked using state-of-the-art communications technologies, eventually forming a global network of diversity and commonalities and helping to promote world peace and social justice.”

The website for Sherk’s non-profit organization, Life Frames, Inc., says, “A Living Library develops themed, content-rich landscapes with integrated community programs, multidisciplinary project-based learning, and state-of-the-art communications technologies.  A Living Library is created by all sectors of the community, particularly students, and cultivates the ’Human Garden’ by its emphasis on diversity, commonalities, participation, and inclusivity from the peoples of the world.  A Living Library provides a practical and enchanting way to bring us all together and celebrate life.”  The website address is www.alivinglibrary.org.

In another description, Sherk’s materials say, “A Living Library transforms sunken meadows and brownfields, urban sprawl and desolation, public parks and plazas, concrete and asphalt schoolyards, civic centers or undeveloped wastelands into vibrant and relevant multicultural community learning environments.“  It makes them, she says, “highly visible public magnets“ which, in turn, are a “systemic framework and vehicle for environmental and educational transformation.”

Just what might be done on Roosevelt Island remains to be seen, and created, Sherk says, by the community itself.  She’s currently back in San Francisco, but expects to return here at the end of February to continue work on the planning phase, which her timeline says will stretch to January, 2004.  The next task is to set up a steering committee and work toward a map of possible Roosevelt Island sites and assess the various alternatives.  By next January, the project should be producing an action plan and funding plan for Phase 2 – actual development of A Living Library.